Brilliant Life Hacks That No Longer Do Any Hacking

It’s always incredibly exhilarating to score a great deal. However, it’s even more satisfying to discover a life hack that repeatedly earns you free stuff. If you see the opportunity to scam a major company, what’s stopping you from cashing in on corporate weakness?

Aside from damaging your moral compass, the only bad thing about hacks that get you deals is that they are almost always time sensitive. People used to be able to get tons of free craft samples from Amazon, but then the shipping conglomerate realized that shoppers were using carpet samples for cat construction projects, and promptly closed the loophole.

Even after they expire, life hacks can still be useful, as they can inspire new ideas that let you score great deals. The clever contributors on Reddit have pooled their knowledge of bygone life hacks, and you won’t believe how much free stuff they’ve accumulated.

Buy The Office Dinner, Expense The Meal, Then Fly For Free

“At my last office job there was this girl who always stayed pretty late. She would go around the office asking who was staying late and if they wanted to order dinner. She would place the order on her credit card and then later expense the company for the dinners. She racked up a lot if airline miles doing this.”

Get Crafty And Turn A Free Brownie Into A Free Party Platter

“A certain bbq chain had a birthday club that would send you a free item via email. The email was a word document that was easily changeable. So instead of winning a brownie, you could change it to a huge party platter, as long as you had the correct code. ‘I just stopped in to claim this birthday thing. Oh I won a party platter? Great, I’m going to a party.'”

Turn Coins From The US Mint Into Airline Miles

“A person could just order a bunch of $1 coins from the US mint and you would just pay the face value (no shipping & handling) since they wanted to get more on the market. Well one guy would buy thousands and thousands of dollars on his credit card, and just pay his credit card bill with the dollar coins to rack in millions of airline miles. Pretty smart if you ask me.”

Let Misspelled Words Work In Your Favor Online

“I remember in the early days of eBay you could search for misspellings of items you were interested in and most of the time you could get it for cheap. Once everyone caught on to this it was game over, and now eBay has vastly improved search functionality…”

“A friend of mine bought a few models for Warhammer 40,000 on eBay for a dollar because the seller misspelled the name of it. The item should have gone for $80+ and he managed to grab it for $0.99. The seller obliged and probably raged a bit. This is when you had to manually input tags for everything.”

Enlarge Your Punctuation So You Don’t Have To Write As Much For School Papers

Adjust Your Game Console’s Clock To Unlock Weapons Faster

“In some games that involved waiting some amount of time, you used to be able to change the clock in your device into the future and unlock the item/whatever it is you were waiting for and then revert your time and still maintain the item. Unfortunately, now you have to wait.”

Get Free Pizza Every Time You Order

“Our local pizza chain used to sell fundraiser stickers that let you do a buy one get one free deal.

Everyone had one, but my dad soon found out that most of the restaurants never even asked for the sticker when you went to pick up your order. So he would always say to keep the sticker in your pocket unless they asked for it. Furthermore, if they did ask for the sticker, they never checked expiration date on them. We got so much free pizza that way.

They have now switched to a loyalty card method that is required for checkout and expiration dates are stored in the computer.”

Get A New Ticket So You Don’t Have To Pay For Parking

“Used to be in the older days when you went into a pay parking garage, you got a ticket for your car. When you would leave, you put the ticket in the machine and it calculates how much you owe.

They still do that.

Thing is, in ye olden days, you could simply walk by the gate, get a new ticket, and then walk to your car and drive out using the new ticket and the system thought you were only in there for like 30 seconds.

These days they put weight sensors under the ticket area so they won’t dispense a ticket unless there is actually a car sitting on top of it.”

Get Free Items And Money Back From Faulty Vending Machines

“The vending machine in my apartment accepted dollar coins but would return it right back. So all I needed was a single coin and run it through the slot twice to get something and would also get the change back from my ‘two dollars.’ Did this a few times a month to check it was still working/broken. I ended up just leaving the change behind for someone else to use.

The machine, unsurprisingly, has been turned off and is no longer serviced.”

Use The Back Door For Free Gym Membership

“There was a gym by my university that was expensive but since it was in Nicaragua was about the best one available at the time. I paid for the membership once then realized they never checked your membership through the back door. Since the trainers all knew me by then I stopped paying for the membership and just walked in through the back door and acted like I belonged. I did this for like two years before the place rebranded and changed ownership and added a check in kiosk through the back door because I had shared my secret with a few too many people, but by then I had finished my career.”

Get Free Food From McDonald’s Surveys

“Oh man, the McD’s ‘Free BigMac or Quarter Pounder for taking our survey’ was the best; especially because the $0.00 promo receipt would give you the ability to fill out the survey again. Now it’s ‘Buy One Get One.'”

Score Deals On Used Professional Clothes

“Back in college, we used to be able to go to a few local thrift stores (Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc) and find great deals. Allen Edmond dress shoes for $9.99, gently worn dress shirts and pants for $3-5 each. Used to go probably two times a month and built up a pretty decent wardrobe for my internship/first job. Sometimes, we’d even find things with tags on them still.

Now, after thrifting got popular, prices went up. Dress shoes are now around $15-20 and shirts/pants are often $10-12 for questionable quality and often very dated styles. If you use coupons, you can often get better prices at Kohls and other department stores than at thrift stores now.”

Get Free Rides From Lyft By Creating Fake Phone Numbers

“When Lyft was starting in my area they did this promotion where when you signed up you received 50 free rides. Well during this time I discovered the Google Phone app where you could create a new phone number linked to a Gmail account. I ended up having like 200 free rides! I took them to work, to my girlfriends house, grocery store you name it. My car wasn’t touched for a month because I didn’t need it. After those 3-4 weeks Lyft caught on and banned me and my credit cards from the app. I can’t even hail a Lyft ride when I give someone else my card to put into their account.”

Threaten To Cancel Cable For Free HBO

“I had free HBO for a decade from Comcast. Used to call them and say I was going to cancel service unless they give me HBO free for six months. I did that for so long that the last time I called, the guy read a note that was added to my account saying I’ve been getting HBO for free since 2009 and that I should be transferred to the canceling service folks if I ask for it again.